The present invention relates to a hemmer seamer assembly.
In the past, the commercial production of shirt sleeves, particularly T-shirt sleeves has been quite labor-intensive and expensive. A sleeve blank is cut from a larger piece of cloth, and then is fed by hand to a forming station whereat a hem is formed along one edge of the blank. The hem blank is then commonly manually removed from the forming station, and folded over by hand. The sleeve handling device disclosed in U.S. Ser. No. 050,989, incorporated herein by reference, automatically forms the hem in the blank, and folds the blank for subsequent handling.
The folded blank is then passed to a sewing station to sew a seam in the folded blank in order to form the sleeve, and the sleeve may include an arcuate seam along an edge of the blank generally transverse to the hem.
However, sewing machines which form seams utilizing chain stitches on a succession of pieces of material with the seam being continued into the area intermediate the pieces of material have been used in other environments. With seams of this type, means are provided for detaching the pieces of material one from the other by appropriate automatic chain-cutting devices after the sewn pieces have been caused to travel beyond the needle and the presser foot of the machine.
By cutting the chain of stitches with these devices, one portion of minimal length remains attached to the stitched piece of material and the other being connected to the throat plate which will project from a subsequent piece of stitched material resulting in a slackening of the seams initial stitches which give the leading edge of the work piece an undesirable appearance and unsatisfactory initial stitches.